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SCIENCESaturday 15 August 2015

10 years after Katrina, Louisiana’s towns melting into sea

CAIN BURDEAU made, have caused the lines and wetlands loss due has established new agen- Along the 150-mile-wide
Associated Press rapid loss of wetlands. to urban development. cies focused on coastal delta, people are leaving
DELACROIX, Louisiana There’s sea-level rise (esti- “The best hope for these restoration, launched pilot generations-old home-
(AP) — Many of the fish- mates of 3 feet or more in communities, and this in- projects to reclaim open steads and moving behind
ermen who once lived in the next century), the nat- cludes New Orleans, is water by pumping in mud the newly fortified levees.
this small Louisiana fishing ural sinking of the delta, getting behind a very ag- and developed a 50-year, Lester Ansardi, a 66-year-
town have disappeared, ongoing damage from oil gressive delta restoration $50 billion master plan to old crabber who moved
fleeing behind the levees drilling (more than 10,000 program,” said Jim Tripp, reverse land loss. behind the floodwalls,
protecting New Orleans
out of fear one more hur- An abandoned boat lies on the bank of Grand Bayou, La., Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015. In the past century, more than 1,880 square
ricane will send the rest of miles of Louisiana land has turned into open water — an area nearly the size of Delaware.
Delacroix into the sea.
Ten years after Hurricane Associated Press
Katrina ravaged the Gulf
Coast, killing more than miles of oil canals crisscross a senior counsel for the En- None of it has worked so points to the rising height
1,830 people and caus- the coast), and repeated vironmental Defense Fund far. of the stilts that Delac-
ing more than $150 billion hurricane damage (six who sits on panels explor- Scientists say Katrina was roix houses sit on to avoid
in damage in the nation’s hurricanes have ravaged ing coastal restoration especially destructive be- flooding.
costliest disaster, New Or- Louisiana’s coast in the plans. cause of the disappear- “When we grew up, there
leans has been fortified by past decade). Since the early 1990s, the ance of all the buffer were no houses high-
a new $14.5 billion flood Add to that the clear-cut government has spent bil- land, which helped keep er than 10 feet off the
protection system. But out- logging that wiped out the lions on coastal works to a deadly hurricane that ground,” Ansardi said. “Af-
side the city, efforts have swamp forests at the end slow land loss, but the Gulf landed a century ago ter Betsy houses went up
lagged to protect small of the 1800s, the spaghet- inexorably advances. from flooding New Or- 12 foot. Now, they’re 20
towns and villages losing ti-like network of gas pipe- Since Katrina, Louisiana leans. feet high.”q
land every year to erosion.
And as that land buffer dis-
appears, New Orleans be-
comes more vulnerable.
In the past century, more
than 1,880 square miles
(4,870 sq. kilometers) of
Louisiana land has turned
into open water. An aver-
age 17 square miles disap-
pear annually, according
to the U.S. Geological Sur-
vey.
Katrina itself caused about
190 square miles of land
erosion in just days, the
loss of an area bigger than
New Orleans itself.
Now, cemeteries are dis-
appearing into the Gulf.
Entire barrier island chains,
lighthouses, bridges, roads,
schools and entire towns
have been washed away.
“We’re losing the cultural
fabric of south Louisiana,”
said Jessica Schexnayder,
a researcher with the Loui-
siana State University Sea
Grant program. “It’s not
just whether the land will
disappear, it’s about when
it’s going to be gone.”
Scientists say many fac-
tors, most of them man-